Saturday, May 1, 2010

Freezer Cooking Day/s May 2010

My freezer at the end of the day. I think if I rearrange things well enough, I might still have space for another 2 or more casserole meals.

So we began. My first official "freezer cooking day". I've done bits and pieces of freezer cooking before, but this time it's alittle more intentional. Still I found that I might have done it quite differently than many others. I "stole" time to cook instead of allocating a whole chunk of time. That's in view of our circumstances. It worked this time! I still had quite some food frozen (not as much as most people) and I didn't have a massively dirty kitchen.

Evening/night.While my hubby played with the kids after dinner, I baked the chocolate chip cookies and made the banana bread.

After the kids slept and I cleaned the kitchen, I made the pizza dough. Wanted to double the recipe, but i realized that hubby (who was grocery shopping) will bring back A LOT of meat, so my freezer might be too full. So made one batch (that's for 2 pizzas, enough for 2 meals)

Here's how I make doughs. I used the plastic bags (you get from grocery stores to put in veg...which is not necessary)...cut it open and knead the dough IN IT. (put flour on it, and then the water etc). THEN I "closed" the bag up and put in the freezer. NO MESS on the table or my fingers!! This is the best tip my mom taught me.

SATURDAYIn the morning, halfway between breakfast and cleanup, I...

...cut up the HUMONGOUS sparerib that hubby got yesterday into pieces and froze them

...prep the ingredients for pasta sauce (cut up and remove sausage from casing, froze the rest)

...and I made my hubby's favorite black bean and rice burrito. (except I don't have pepper but I have corn!) I do everything the same, except it's not as an enchilada but burrito. (did 10 burritos)

Evening.

Hubby cooked up his famous pasta sauce. Me, the souz chef, has cut up the ingredients for him.

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History

Ever since hubby took over the role of CFO in the house, he did a wonderful job of projection, calculation and report. And we realized, even though we do not buy much things, it is really hard to keep costs down (it's amazing that we're still living below our means). Living in New York City makes our rent, tax and health insurance automatically elevated and our dispensable income is not pretty. Since we're commited to me staying home with the kids (and thus living on hubby's income alone), we want to make life work.

YouData

Mission Goal

To maximize the ability to enjoy life God has given us through wise financial stewardship and material management.

Objectives

Our objectives are to use different money-saving approaches (including lifestyle changes and cutting clutter in the house) to REDUCE COSTS, INCREASE SAVINGS and CONTROL CLUTTER so that we are able to ENJOY our present way of LIFE (i.e., hubby to stay at his job whereby he can have the maximum family time), improve health and recreation, up our giving and save for our children (hopefully more than we have now)'s college fund (we would love for some, if not all, of them to experience the small Christian College, a.k.a more expensive, education).